Poland

The story

Poland was a European great power (the Commonwealth with Lithuania stretched between two seas, and its 1791 constitution was Europe's first), then vanished entirely, partitioned by neighbours for 123 years. Reborn in 1918, it suffered WWII's worst devastation: six million citizens killed, Warsaw razed. Solidarity, born in Gdańsk's shipyard in 1980, cracked the Soviet bloc open. Post-1989 Poland is the continent's great success story: three decades of nearly unbroken growth.

The people

Poles combine deep Catholicism, fierce hospitality (a guest in the house is God in the house, runs the proverb), and a romantic streak forged by history: the national epics are about doomed uprisings, the national heroes include Chopin, Copernicus, Skłodowska-Curie, and John Paul II. Name days trump birthdays and pierogi arguments are taken seriously.

The economy

The EU's sixth economy never had a recession between 1992 and 2020, a European record. Manufacturing (appliances, furniture, car parts, batteries), IT outsourcing, and gaming (CD Projekt's Witcher) lead; Warsaw's skyline now out-towers most of Europe. The złoty endures, euro adoption unhurried.

Traveling there

Kraków and Gdańsk are the beauties, Warsaw the phoenix, Wrocław the student town of a hundred bridges. The Tatra mountains at Zakopane, Masuria's thousand lakes, and Białowieża's bison forest show the wild side. Prices remain among the EU's friendliest.